Tithonus poem

[8] The provenance of the Cologne papyrus is suspect; the manuscript's seller claimed it had been in an anonymous Swiss collection since "the early 1970s," suspiciously coincident with the UNESCO 1970 Convention.

[7] The Tithonus poem is twelve lines long,[11] and is in a metre called "acephalous Hipponacteans with internal double-choriambic expansion".

[14] It discusses the singer's old age, and tells the audience that while they too will grow old and lose their beauty, their musical abilities will be retained.

[14] Anton Bierl suggests that it was originally composed as a didactic work, intended to teach young women about beauty and mortality.

The story of Tithonus was popular in archaic Greek poetry, though the reference to him in this poem seems out of place, according to Rawles.

[17] Martin Litchfield West considers that these lines seem like a weak ending to the poem, though Tithonus functions as a parallel to Sappho in her old age.

[19] ὔμμες τάδε Μοίσαν ἰ]ο̣κ[ό]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδες, 1 σπουδάσδετε καὶ τὰ]ν φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύνναν· ἔμοι δ’ ἄπαλον πρίν] π̣οτ̣’ [ἔ]ο̣ντα χρόα γῆρας ἤδη κατέσκεθε, λεῦκαι δ’ ἐγ]ένοντο τρίχες ἐκ μελαίναν, βάρυς δέ μ’ ὀ [θ]ῦμο̣ς πεπόηται, γόνα δ’ οὐ φέροισι, 5 τὰ δή ποτα λαίψη̣ ρ’ ἔον ὄρχησθ’ ἴσα νεβρίοισι.

τὰ ⟨νῦν⟩ στεναχίσδω θαμέως· ἀλλὰ τί κεν ποείην; ἀ̣γ̣ήραον, ἄνθρωπον ἔοντ’, οὐ δύνατον γένεσθαι.

καὶ γάρ π̣[ο]τ̣α̣ Τίθωνον ἔφαντο βροδόπαχυν Αὔων, ἔρωι δε̣δ̣άθ̣εισαν, βάμεν’ εἰς ἔσχατα γᾶς φέροισα[ν, 10 ἔοντα̣ [κ]ά̣λ̣ο̣ν καὶ νέον, ἀλλ’ αὖτον ὔμως ἔμαρψε χρόνωι π̣ό̣λ̣ι̣ο̣ν̣ γῆρας, ἔχ̣ [ο]ν̣τ̣’ ἀθανάταν ἄκοιτιν.

[22] The poems in this metre by Sappho are conventionally thought to have been from the fourth book of the Alexandrian edition, though no direct evidence either confirms or denies this.

[22] Before the Cologne papyri were published in 2004, lines 11 to 26 of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1787 were considered to be a single poem, fragment 58 in the Lobel-Page (and subsequently Voigt) numbering systems.

[g][25] However, other scholars, including Gronewald and Daniel, who originally published the Cologne fragments, believe that the poem did continue for these four lines.

[26] The publication of the Cologne papyri in 2004, making the Tithonus poem almost complete, drew international attention from both scholars and the popular press.